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The former vice president repeated a debunked trope about the racial achievement gap and blamed minority parents for the legacy of segregation.

By Michael Hobbes

In a long and often rambling interview with The New York Times published Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden responded to a question about the legacy of racism by blaming Black parents for the racial achievement gap.

In the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate, held in September, Biden had said that one way America could address the legacy of slavery and segregation was by bridging the “word gap” between white and Black children. “A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there,” Biden said. He then recommended that Black parents play records at night to “make sure that kids hear words.”

The New York Times editorial board pressed Biden on these claims and asked him to elaborate on how solving the word gap would address the legacy of slavery. Biden began his answer by noting that former President Barack Obama had also been criticized for advising Black parents to take more responsibility for raising children. He then suggested that America could do more to help minority parents “provide more guidance and better guidance for themselves and their families.”

Finally, he suggested that Black parents may not participate in their children’s schooling due to embarrassment about their own lack of education. Biden said he’d learned from his wife, a former school teacher, that poor parents “don’t show up because they’re embarrassed. They’re embarrassed the teacher’s going to say — and it’s hard to say, ‘Well, I can’t read.’”

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